2012 Turkey Season Forecast

North Carolina hunters are hoping for another record-breaking spring gobbler season. Here’s where to look for a longbeard.

Although there’s no way to know what type of turkey season North Carolina hunters will have this spring, anyone who considers recent history probably will come to the conclusion could be looking at another record year. After all, the state’s spring gobbler harvest has been escalating at a steady pace for years.

Old-timers may recall when the first announced statewide spring turkey harvest was 144 birds in 1977, six years after the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission hired Wayne Bailey of West Virginia to direct its wild-turkey restoration program and build up a statewide flock of only 2,000 wild birds scattered across North Carolina.

The harvest started heading up in 1979, then began a steep rise as the Commission used money it set aside, along with money donated by the National Wild Turkey Federation, to bring birds into the Tarheel State. Bailey, then his two successors, Brian Hyder and Mike Seamster, also worked deals with other states to swap turkeys primarily for river otters, and Bailey pushed for and got a spring, gobblers-only season, eliminating the fall season.

In 1985, the harvest broke the 500-mark. Three seasons later, it topped 1,000. In 2006, North Carolina hunters took more than 10,000 birds for the first time. And the rise has continued steadily. In 2010, hunters tagged13,756 turkeys, then 14,476 during 2011’s April-May season..

Only a handful of times since Bailey first went to work has a season’s harvest total been lower than the previous year, usually after a poor hatch following a period of wet, cold weather during the prime hatching-and-rearing season.

In 2009, the Commission estimated the statewide flock at 150,000 birds, an 750-fold increase over 1970 levels. But for years, an anomaly has been the spring brood count. To the unknowing eye, it doesn’t make much sense.

The Commission first began tracking breeding success in 1988, counting turkey poults and comparing that total with the number of hens observed; that year, it was 5.5 poults per hen. But that number dropped significantly the next year, falling to 3.5. By 1992, it was down to 2.0 — anything less was considered a poor hatch — and has hovered near that figure for a decade. Yet turkey harvests, even with moderate-to-poor poult survival, have increased every year.

Evin Stanford, a biologists who heads up the Commission’s wild-turkey program, said there’s good and bad news.

“Actually, North Carolina is about 10 years behind every other state in the Southeast (that) did turkey restoration,” he said. “We’ve still got some places in the state that haven’t reached the full potential.”

Stanford said other southeastern states have noticed a trend toward lower turkey harvests — but not North Carolina. Expanding turkeys moving into newer regions, such as the coastal plain, are one reason North Carolina is holding steady.

“Habitat is always the key, and we still have some good turkey habitat in the east and in the northwestern part of the state,” he said. “There are even good numbers of turkeys in far-western North Carolina.”

Northampton and Halifax counties, along the Roanoke River drainage, have led the state in overall turkey harvests the past few years because of great habitat and expanding flocks. The northwestern section of the state provides terrain with equally good habitat, including hardwood ridges, scattered pine and fir forests and fields and pastures that offer plenty of insects for chicks and older turkeys.

Rutherford, Stokes, Wilkes, Allegheny and Ashe counties contain good turkey territory, and their high annual harvest figures show it.

“It’s interesting, too, if you’ll notice, that counties with high deer harvests also have big turkey harvests,” Stanford said. “I think that probably shows similar habitat is preferred by both species.”

So what about the average-to-poor reproduction of recent years? Why hasn’t that shown up in lower harvests? Stanford revealed one piece of evidence that’s not been noticed much outside biologists circles or to those with a statistical background.

The annual summer brood survey, which shows the number of poults each hen carries through to fall survival, includes year-old hens, aka “jennies”, that normally aren’t ready to reproduce — along with the older hens that do most of the breeding.

So if the jennies are factored out, North Carolina in reality probably has had above-average poult survival. And an expansion of the flock into “new” areas, accompanied by closing the season for a few years, usually results in good hatches.

“Any time you introduce turkeys into a new habitat and there’s no competition from other turkeys, and predators haven’t learned how to hunt them — plus, we also were introducing turkeys into high-quality habitats — it’s not surprising you’d see higher poult survival rates,” he said. “I also think the first folks who were doing the reporting were cooperating with the restoration program, and a lot of them owned the properties where we released turkeys, so they were conscientious in looking out for turkeys and making reports. That’s probably not always the case later.”

Once turkeys were stocked statewide, the Commission later released them into varying types of habitats.

“They were released at areas with high, low and average habitats, so again, survival rates might not have been as high as when we first started and put them in really good places,” he said.

Stanford said the jury still is out on predation as a factor in turkey survival.

“Coyotes weren’t around much in the 70s, and they are now, but there’s no conclusive evidence they’re hurting turkeys to any great extent,” Stanford said. “Coyotes and turkeys have lived together for years in the West, Midwest and Southwest.”

Research is occurring at Fort Bragg to see how much of an effect coyotes have on turkeys.

As wild turkeys have moved into new ranges, they’ve attracted the attention of more hunters. In 2005, Stanford said 70,226 hunters indicated they targeted turkeys; by 2007 that number had jumped to 72,609.

Although Stanford said the Commission now uses a different statistical method to analyze survey data — indicating that 66,965 people targeted turkeys in the state during the 2010 spring season, he said previous hunter numbers probably had been overestimated.

“I think in recent years there have been around 67,000 to 69,000 turkey hunters in the state,” he said.

That means probably close to 300,000 turkey hunting trips per season, so it’s no surprise harvests have increased. Then again, extra turkeys have to be on the landscape for hunters to harvest them.

“The bottom line is, just because we have a fair-to-poor brood survey index doesn’t mean you can’t have increased turkey density,” Stanford said. “We still have recruitment in many areas of the state, especially in coastal areas.”

The statewide flock is only 10 percent the size of North Carolina’s statewide deer herd, but it has seen a similar resurgence, percentage-wise, from the late 1960s. Today, each of the state’s 100 counties contributes birds to the harvest count.

So like deer hunters, most hunters who chase turkeys have birds within easy driving distance of their homes, if not within walking distance of their back doors.

However, that doesn’t mean turkey hunters now ignore public lands. Many North Carolina residents are protective of wild birds and don’t cotton much to having people hunt their private land because turkeys don’t eat yard flowers and shrubbery, don’t put $2,000 dents in automobiles and don’t carry ticks and Lyme disease.

For the most part, the best Game Lands nowadays are the ones that were top-drawer in 1977 — with a few exceptions.

While the Caswell Game Gands once had no challengers in turkey numbers and drew hunters from far and wide, those days are long gone. Turkeys still roam the public areas, scattered around Yanceyville, but the birds have spread into every nook and cranny on private property in this northern piedmont location.

The top counties last season for Game Lands harvest were two that sit shoulder to shoulder in the foothills: Burke and McDowell. They’re split by the Catawba River drainage between Morganton and Marion, with McDowell’s western edge bumping against the mountains and both containing part of the Pisgah National Forest. Hunters in Burke County took 65 birds from Game Lands last season, while McDowell hunters took 56.

Montgomery County in the Piedmont, which contains much of the Uwharrie National Forest — ranked third with 42 public-land gobblers. A western mountain county, Jackson, was fourth with 41 turkeys killed at the Nantahala National Forest game lands. Caswell Game Lands ranked fifth with 37 downed wild turkeys.

Overall, Northampton County hunters bagged the most turkeys last season, 439. Just across the Roanoke River, Halifax ranked second with 431. Rockingham in the northern Piedmont rated third with 418, followed by eastern neighbor Caswell with 376. Stokes County — where the western Piedmont meets the northwestern mountains, had a harvest of 365 birds to round out the top five. Rutherford in the foothills was sixth with 346, followed by Wilkes in the northwestern mountains with 323, then three counties along the Cape Fear River drainage: Bladen with 322, Pender with 310 and Duplin with 270.

Top 2010 Turkey Counties

County – Harvest

1. Northampton – 439

2. Halifax – 431

3. Rockingham – 418

4. Caswell – 376

5. Stokes – 365

6. Rutherford – 346

7. Wilkes – 323

8. Bladen – 322

9. Pender – 310

10. Duplin – 270